She awoke to dull pain and cool air. Not a state she was unfamiliar with, but the surroundings were far less so. From her one good eye she could see glowing moss coating the ceiling above her uncomfortable bed. She tried turning her head, happy to feel only a slight ache rather than any sharp pains that might indicate serious injuries. She once again watched the obvious farm, slimes occasionally sliding into and out of holes in the walls, a painful reminder of the sentient, and old, dungeon.

She tried to pull up memories of her studies, now seeming so long ago, about dungeons. She’d gotten her class early, as most of the poorest families did, which allowed her to have a direction early in life. She couldn’t wait for something more powerful, or more directed and scout was a good choice, according to her mother. It would leave her with wider options than other simple classes as well as give her abilities to keep well away from danger, for all the good that had done her. While she had done plenty of studying, actual experience in her class was lacking and gave her very few options in any kind of fight.

As far as she could remember, from her scout classes, dungeons had a wide variety of different ranks, designations, threat levels, along with a number of sub classes and ranks. The jade moon, her home, was classified as ancient. From what she remembered it was a moderate threat level and ranged from indifferent up to somewhat hostile. She’d need a dungeon inspector to actually get a good read on this dungeon, a subclass of scout, but even now she knew this dungeon wouldn’t be classified as hostile or murderous. It might just have been the time spent alone on the moon, but the dungeon seemed closer to curious, possibly even friendly, as it would have taken some effort to keep its monsters from just killing her.

She turned her head again, looking now towards the entrance and her heart sank at the sight that greeted her. Clothes. Not just random dungeon loot, it was her own clothing piled on the desk near the door. She had hoped it would be naïve and just assumed she’d popped up out of nowhere, or walked from some more habitable part of the moon, but it clearly knew she couldn’t be native. That cut off a few escape plans, or possibly all of them if the dungeon had captured her ship. She was stuck here now.

She laid her head back and sighed. She wouldn’t give up. Right now she was in a shallow part of the dungeon, just the second level, and when a search and recovery vessel was dispatched, she’d be saved fairly quickly, assuming a team came and not just another solo operative. For now she’d just focus on keeping the dungeons curiosity in her, or providing some use to it, so she wouldn’t be used for resources, or just killed for entertainment.

After some time she decided she’d been cursing her luck long enough and made to sit up. She felt surprisingly alright, after having been given the second worst beating of her life, and wondered at her body. Her bruises had receded somewhat, rather than deepening, and, after some gentle prodding, discovered her ribs were in a better state. They certainly felt broken but seemed further along the road to mending than they had been when she’d used her med pack to fix them in place. She’d either been out of it far longer than she’d expected, or something about the room was helping her along.

She looked down at the moss, thinking for a moment, before realizing she was in a room surrounded by healing reagents. They must have been very low grade, but the fact that there was so much of the stuff surprised her. Most dungeons wouldn’t focus so much in one place, not near the surface, but it made enough sense. This was one of the dungeons farms, of course the farmed material would eventually expand to encompass the whole of the room. It was odd, to her, that the dungeon would choose moss as its farmed material of choice, with it only expanding some inches away from a surface, but she’d not bring that up and risk gaining the dungeons annoyance.

Finally, confident she wouldn’t collapse, she eased off the mossy bed and onto her feet, regretting her decision but needing to move all the same, the pain in her hip would just have to be endured. Her first reason for needing to move was the overpowering urge to relieve herself, something she intended to do away from her bed, until a slight sizzling noise started up.

She turned to see what manner of creature she was sharing a room with and noticed now a slime had been at the door, and was now making its way towards her. It wasn’t all too threatening, not in that she could beat it with her bare hands, but because, even injured, she could outpace it easily. The dungeon had to know that, right? Looking past the slime, making sure a spider wouldn’t be right behind it, she noticed the gray panel beside the door. It was another of the dungeons drawings and it seemed clear enough to her. “Shout at the slime and get your attention huh?” With her options being to go deeper into a slime infested farm, jump the slime and go into the hopper infested cavern, or to shout and get the dungeons attention. She made her choice and tried shouting at the slime.

“I’m not running, I just need to find a bathroom!” She didn’t think a bathroom would be an option but she just shouted the first thing that came to mind and hoped it would work. Seconds later it seemed that it did the trick as the slime stopped its march towards her, then started sliding back to where it had been standing guard. Now she knew she had the dungeons attention, as unsettling as the thought was.

“Uh.” She blanked for a moment. “I need to-” She paused as she considered her words. Would the dungeon even know about bodily functions? Sure, some monsters would ‘defecate’ in a way, but that was always as a form of resource refining or trap production, even weapons. No monsters really needed to process waste as nothing they ate was wasted.

A sharp crack brought her out of her thoughts and she turned to face the sound, noticing a door that had been directly ahead of where her head was when she woke up. With her ruined eye she hadn’t seen it in her peripheral vision, nor would she have likely seen it with the slime occupying her attention. A rock had fallen onto the metal construction, reminding her of the airlocks she’d had to traverse to get into the dungeon.

She moved towards the door, after a quick glance around to make sure she hadn’t missed anything else. The door opened with some effort, the door might have looked better than the first she’d seen, but it was still built like a bulkhead and heavy enough to make it a small struggle to move aside. Inside was a stone room containing what appeared to be two large basins, or tubs, a walled off portion of the room that had a general metal shower head, and accompanying knobs, then finally an overly large toilet with strips of moss that had been placed beside the toilet seat. It took her looking around once more to notice a second door, smaller than the first and built like a regular door rather than an airlock.

The light above her head, coming from the dimly glowing moss, made it easy enough to see things, though she realized she’d missed a water spout and knobs that jutted out just above one of the large stone tubs. Curious as she was, her need to relieve herself had gone from demand to a threat. She managed to haul the big door shut, childish as that made her feel, and quickly moved to the toilet to make use of it. The dark cavern in the toilet seat seemed a little ominous but it was quickly ignored.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

With her business done she moved to the tub to see if the faucet there would serve to wash her hands, though regretted the attempt as a softly glowing liquid sprayed forth, making her yank her hands back in shock. For now, she’d settle with scrubbing her hands on the somewhat damp moss rather than risking mysterious dungeon liquids.

While shutting off the mystery fluid she was startled by a somewhat loud creaking coming from her left. She had to crane her head around to see the other door had opened, leading into another dimly lit room. With nothing else to do, she followed what had to be the dungeons invitation and walked over and into the room, beholding something that might be comfortable to a dwarven family.

Stone furniture filled the room, along with a long length of countertops. The counters were closed off with general mineral doors and it appeared that some of the furniture had been padded with white pillows, or fashioned into an odd netted style. It was clearly meant to be a living space, if oddly laid out. She even noticed a mock fireplace that had glowing mushrooms coming out of it, fenced in by general metal bars.

She was only growing more and more confused with the situation when a final door decided to creak open at the far end of the room, prompting her to move on to the last room. There she found an obvious bedroom. The bed was enormous, reminding her of the time she’d had to buy furnishings for her little craft. The net bedding looked odd, but touching the soft silk made it feel inviting. The side tables became an afterthought as she noticed that a pair of silken lines lead up to the ceiling where the glowing moss had been inset and was covered with a grate. It took a second of staring but she finally recognized that the grate was meant to adjust at a pull of the lines, either opening or closing.

It was all feeling a little too surreal. Just days ago she’d been slowly moving from planet to planet in the system, using her ship to map out the asteroids and find dense pockets of materials that the jade moon either didn’t produce or were produced so deeply that hunting the stars for the material was the less challenging option. Now she was standing in a room that almost matched her childhood apartment in size and meant only for sleeping and changing clothes. All built by a dungeon that had captured her and nursed her back to health.

She moved to leave the room, her own churning thoughts making her dizzy, and limped for one of the chairs. She managed to sit in one of the net chairs. Finding it comfortable only added to the deluge of thoughts spinning in her head.

How had she come to be here? Her and her mother had saved every bare credit available. Long hours as a runner worked until she had only enough strength to drag herself home. All to save up the money to buy an old survey ship that she could use to work a safe, if demanding, job. Now she was here being given more than her mother had ever owned, by a dungeon. Treated as a guest rather than an intruder. What madness had her lifes path suddenly come upon.

In her silent delirium she hadn’t noticed the barely audible scratching as stone disappeared in front of her. While the dungeon certainly wasn’t the best with noticing someones moods or troubles, he could certainly recognize someone losing the plot so, with another dropped stone, and resounding crack, he brought her back into focus.

There on the floor in front of her was a line of images. It lacked the grace of true artwork but the images were getting the point across. The first was her blundering into the hoppers, googly eyed critters bouncing off a stick figure with pointed ears. Then it appeared that the image was sent into a brain, which was impossible to parse. It appeared the dungeon recognized her confusion as more scratching took place. Slowly it drew out a new image, this appearing to be a sheet with foreign writing on it. It was inelegant and stiff, like someone was just chiseling harsh lines into stone and lacking the beauty naturally imparted to the ancient texts of any peoples she knew of. An arrow was drawn to the sheet, then another indicating it was going into the brain. This too, astonishingly, confused her so a new image started to take shape.

Now she was looking at an image of a stick figure elf with glasses standing before smaller stick figures. It was pointing to a screen, or so she believed, with random swooping lines on the screen. A line appeared above the image and a hastily drawn elf with a gun was drawn with an arrow pointing at the glasses elf, then from that elf to the brain. It took a second before she realized something. “The one with the gun is meant to be me?” A moment later a mark appeared, two lines touching at their points with one line shorter than the other. It wasn’t a full crossing out so it might be an affirmative so she tried an obviously wrong answer. “And this one is meant to be a butcher?” It took a much longer time before a cross mark appeared. “Alright, so half a cross for yes, a full one for no.” She nodded to herself for finally figuring something out.

Before she could be reprimanded in some way for giving a wrong answer on purpose, she quickly gave what she thought was the correct answer. “I assume that elf is supposed to be a teacher?” A quick half mark confirmed her thoughts, which only added a new one. “If you have creatures capable of teaching others, why do you resort to this method?” Then she quickly added. “I do not mean to insult you, great dungeon, I only wish to know why this is your preferred method.” It took some time before three lines were marked beside her elf. An arrow pointed from her to the second and she understood it meant she was on the second level of the dungeon. Then, beside the floor below it, a very rough skull and crossed bones was drawn. “Oh.” This, to hers and all other races, was a very obvious warning. Death or danger awaits you ahead.

“I understand and thank you for your consideration.” She hadn’t even made it past the door to the second level, the third must have been a nightmare if the dungeon wouldn’t even risk sending her down there. “I understand this bit though.” She decided to move on without bringing up lower levels. “You want me to teach you.” She pointed at the image she’d been shown. “The first is of my encounter with your monsters. From my interaction you learned something from me and you wish that to continue?” Two affirmative marks made her nod, though that prospect seemed a bit of a grim fate if she had to continue doing battle with monsters. Still, she moved on to the other images before she voiced her concerns.

The second image was of a circle depositing something into the elfs hands, then an arrow going from that deposit to a layout of the rooms she’d just explored. This was easy enough to understand. She’d provided something for the dungeon so it was providing something to her. It even comforted her somewhat as transactional type dungeons were one of the few types well understood. Well enough that even her early scout training gave good information on them, simple style dungeons that preferred a transactional relationship with their delvers. Even slights against them didn’t often raise their ire. “I gave you something you valued and now you’re offering this place as a payment for that?” A half mark followed and she smiled, all but confirming this as a transactional type of dungeon.

The next image was, again, simple to parse. It was of an elf comparing flowing lines to those of the harder chiseled lines while a circle dumped solid bars on her desk. “You want me to learn this writing style or language?” A half mark followed by a full. So half right. She only had to puzzle over it for a moment before an arrow was drawn from the flowing lines to the circle. “You want to learn the common elven script?” A half mark confirmed it and she nodded. “It is an elegant way of writing. Should you learn it I'm sure many delvers would appreciate it and be better drawn in by your dungeon. It would also do better than just images for communication.” Then a lightbulb went off in her head. “You wish to better communicate with me?” A large half mark appeared and she understood now. She would be paid not just to teach elven writing, but possibly about elves. Their culture, weapons, numbers.

“I would be thrilled to teach you.” She spoke slowly as she thought out her response. “But there are far better people for such a task. Scholar classes, monks, wise men, wizards. I’m just a simple scout with little to offer.” It took a long time for the dungeon to respond, so long she was beginning to wonder if it was summoning forces to punish her for an offense she hadn’t meant to offer. She was about to open her mouth before the dungeon began drawing again, this time further from her. She had to stand to see the drawing but, by the time she was moving a line had already passed her. She made it to the first part of the image and saw it was once again a simple drawing of her, an elf with a gun. Then, following the line, she came upon the other image. A moon resting on the same line. The moon had lines moving past it, which she took to mean motion as she noticed a small triangle under the line. She was then reminded of one of her earlier classes, general history class covering other races and their ancient teachings. One part, from the lost human teachings, had stuck with her all this time.

“Give me a place to stand, and a long enough lever, and I will move the world.”

A shiver ran through her at that moment as she wondered how the mad teachings of that long missing race had managed to appear so far from their home.